Listen First

or Aristotle, rhetoric is the study of how
people analyze and produce arguments.

But as Krista Ratcliffe, professor and new
head of the Department of English, points
out, using language effectively also relies on
learning to listen well.

Listening, however, has often been ignored
as a tool to teach writing. As Ratcliffe and
her colleagues recognized a need for better
ways for people to communicate in situations
where they don’t identify with someone
else’s background or ideology, she developed
the idea of “rhetorical listening,” which she
describes as a stance of openness for hearing
what is said and what is not said.

“I am trying to make listening visible to
people, and make them aware of the tactics
they use,” explains Ratcliffe. For example, she
says, if you hear something you disagree with,
instead of immediately dismissing the idea,
you would instead ask yourself the degree
to which you’re accountable for considering

Fit. You can start by asking yourself what assumptions, or “cultural logics,” form the
basis for your disagreement, based on your
own background and experience.

“Rhetorical listening asks you to stop,pause, listen to the claim, and not just theclaim itself—but to try to tease out, ‘Whatis the cultural logic from which the personis functioning?’” says Ratcliffe. Next, shesays, you may acknowledge that the otherperson is very logical, just functioning withina different cultural logic. You may evenacknowledge, “Maybe I don’t agree with thisperson, but are there any grounds on which Icould identify with him or her?”She finds this approach useful as a scholarand teacher interested in gender and racerelations. “I find it most effective as a teachingtool to talk about race in the classroom vialanguage.” She’ll ask students to map outassumptions they have about a particularword or text and ask them to think aboutwhere those ideas come from. “Listening asksus not just to listen to each other, but also tolisten to the discourses surrounding us,so that we can understand how we’ve beensocialized by language to think in certain ways.”Ratcliffe is a past president of the RhetoricSociety of America, and following her award-winning Rhetorical Listening, her next bookwill explore how “whiteness,” as a category,has an impact on educational institutions andpopular culture.

She was pleased that Purdue recently
ranked third on a list of top 10 schools for
English majors in College Magazine, written
by students for students. She wants to spread
the message that majoring in English is fun
and productive. “Yes, you learn Shakespeare
and Toni Morrison,” she says, “but you also
learn the skills of analysis, interpretation,
and argumentation that transfer to a lot
of different situations, both personal and
professional.”